A fast Friday

Today we wore purple because it was pancreatic cancer awareness day.

Having not had a lesson this week I have felt really lost. Apparently in a few weeks I got used to someone helping me and giving me exercises to do... So today I decided to get my act together, go in the outdoor arena(!) and get a good, proper training session done. Unfortunately, Vallu had other ideas! It may not have been my most clever moment to decide to go in the outdoor where Vallu spooks all the time on the day where we had 70mph winds, and the horse had only been out for an hour before having to be brought in because of torrential rain.

 It started off so well. A good long walk first, with long reins. Then some collection, and riding a few squares with turn on the quarters in every corner to get the outside shoulder in control on both reins. Then leg yielding zig zags down the centre line, during which Vallu was quite literally hoof perfect - listening to me, changing directly immediately when I asked, walking with really good purpose. He's now had twenty minutes to warm up (and in the wind with no coat on, I've had twenty minutes to start going into a deep freeze) so off we pop into a canter, and then whoosh bum down, head up and straight into gallop down the long side....... #notimpressed 

Rightio. Gain some control, back to walk, shorten reins A LOT and try again. Little pony then lulls me into a false sense of security by behaving for five minutes. We got perfect squares, perfect canter-walk-canter transitions, perfect flying changes. I should have known that ears forward means that he was planning something. Lili always wants me to do some collected canter to medium to collected transitions within the canter to get Vallu properly engaged behind, and so I decided to focus on this. Baaaad move. Like seriously bad move. Every single long side, and I mean every single long side Vallu took this as an opportunity to show me that he really could have been a race horse/eventing horse - I'd appeared to have forgotten how quick this horse can go!! Lots of small voltes, lots of half halts and lots of transitions (and about 20 minutes) later we finally got to a stage where we could do a few strides of medium canter down the long side without Vallu turning into a fire breathing dragon. Cue lots of "good boy"s and "please lets never repeat that."

Apparently purple means go faster for Vallu? :D I'm honestly so glad that Vallu is feeling SO much better, and as much as I may moan I'm super chuffed that fat pony has come back ♥︎

Thank you Fur Feather Meds/Lili for letting me borrow this set :)